Please sign the petition below to remove the statue of Jefferson Davis currently in Kentucky’s Capitol Rotunda, and replace it with a tribute to Muhammad Ali, “the Louisville Lip” and “the Greatest of All Time.”
I just heard from the Ali family: It is the Champ’s belief that Islam prohibits three-dimensional representations of living Muslims. Accordingly, I have adjusted the petition to call for a two-dimensional representation of Ali (a portrait, picture or mural) in lieu of a statue.
UPDATE (Tuesday, December 2, 2014)
In this interview with WHAS-TV’s Joe Arnold, Governor Steve Beshear endorses the idea of honoring Muhammad Ali in the State Capitol (although he disagrees with removing Davis). Arnold explores the idea further on his weekly show, “The Powers that Be.”
Click here to check out WDRB-TV’s Lawrence Smith’s coverage of the story.
And here’s my op-ed in Ali’s hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal.
UPDATE (Saturday, June 4, 2016)
In the wake of the 2015 Charlestown tragedy, in which a Confederate flag-waving murderer united the nation against racism, all of the most powerful Kentucky policymakers — U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, Governor Matt Bevin, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker Greg Stumbo — called for the removal of the Davis statue from the Rotunda. Today, as we commemorate last night’s passing of Muhammad Ali, there is no better moment to replace the symbol of Kentucky’s worst era with a tribute to The Greatest of All Time.
UPDATE (Wednesday, June 8, 2016):
Great piece by Lawrence Smith of WDRB-TV in Louisville on the petition drive to replace Jefferson Davis’ statue in the Capitol Rotunda with a tribute to Muhammad Ali.
UPDATE (Thursday, June 9, 2016):
Excellent piece on the petition drive by Jack Brammer that was featured on the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Highlight of the article:
Miller said he has received a few “angry comments” on his call to honor Ali.
“One of them encouraged me to kill myself,” he said. “You can quote me that I have decided not to take their advice.”
UPDATE (Friday, June 10, 2016)
The petition drives continues to show the Big Mo(hammed): check out these stories from WKYU-FM public radio in Bowling Green and WKYT-TV, Channel 27 in Lexington:
UPDATE (Saturday, June 11, 2016):
Still not convinced? Check out this excerpt from today’s New York Times:
By Robert Kahne, RP Staff, on Tue Sep 6, 2011 at 12:30 PM ET
My grandfather and me
I was never a kid to dream big. I never wanted to be an astronaut, or the President, or a rock star or anything. When I was young, I thought it would be nice to be an engineer like my grandfather, because he always had enough money to provide for his family and always seemed happy. When I got to high school, I realized that math was hard, and that I was really much more interested in social studies. I went to college and got a couple of degrees (BA, Economics; BA, Political Science), and then went straight to graduate school and got a Masters degree in Public Policy. I thought that if I followed my passions and worked hard in school, some firm out there would find my credentials appealing and hire me. Even when the economy went south in 2009, I thought that getting an advanced degree would help me out, and that I had worked hard enough and done enough of the right things to find a job somewhere. That hasn’t turned out so well for me.
There is this theme that runs through American mythology that goes something like this — “If you are willing to work, you will find a job in America.” There are several corollaries to this idea–sometimes “work” means “work yourself through college” or “get involved in extra curricular activities” or, in the most cynical iteration “Nothing is promised to you in this world, you have to go out and take it for yourself.” I am not so sure if any of that is true. It might have been at one time, but I cannot look out into the world in which I live and say that anyone can do that. I only have myself as an example, but I am utterly willing to work. Job I have done for money include: making pizza (4 years), hauling recyclable refuse (which was gross-2 years), waiting tables (1 year), and working in a pharmacy clinic (one summer). In addition to that, I stated in school in 1990, at Middletown Methodist Preschool.
I did this 3 times.
I’ve been in school for 20 years straight, and throughout that whole time I’ve worked hard and gotten the grades I needed to advance. I got good grades in elementary school to get into a good middle school, did well enough at that middle school to get into the best high school in my city, and then got into my state’s flagship public institution where I did well enough to get into a top-10 graduate school for my field. Furthermore, I have been active in good causes my whole life. I was the President of clubs in high school and undergraduate. I was selected to serve on a Presidential Advisory Committee in graduate school. I worked to get a student fee passed for sustainability throughout college, and served on the committee which spent that money while I was in school. I even teach Sunday School every other week. I did a lot of stuff–a lot of stuff which I thought would help me out when it came time to make my own living. I really believed in the idea that working hard would mean I could get a job. I even had some assurance that if need be, I had the skills to “take” my lot for myself. Nope.
Read the rest of… Robert Kahne: The Politics of Unemployment
This evening, No Labels will host a “Conversation with America,” featuring Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, to have a serious conversation about the problems of hyper-partisanship in Washington and the actions needed to break the political gridlock.
No Labels Co-Founder John Avlon, Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and Rob Kaplan, Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, will lend their expertise to our conversation on the fiscal crisis.
Since announcing our national telephone town hall last Friday, No Labels has created a stir in the media, capturing the attention of all the major television networks, prominent newspapers and local media outlets.
In Sunday’s New York Times a full-page ad ran from Howard Schultz announcing the call, as well as in USA Today.
We expect even more success as the post-call analysis influences the conversation this week with the GOP presidential debate and the President’s address to a joint session of Congress about job creation.
I encourage you to invite interested friends and family members to participate. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Sarah from No Labels at 202-588-1990 or Sarah@NoLabels.org.
By Patrick Derocher, on Tue Sep 6, 2011 at 11:00 AM ET
Republican New York State Senator Roy McDonald has beent target by socially conservative groups over his vote in favor of same-sex marriage.
It’s been a while, but I’m back at The Recovering Politician, this time to cover the goings-on (especially the hyper-partisan and dysfunctional goings-on) of state governments around this country. This is planned to be a weekly feature on Monday mornings. Here we go!
– Within weeks of his controversial vote in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage in New York, State Senator Roy McDonald is already the target of attack ads in his suburban Albany district, including a rather unsubtle billboard paid for by the National Organization for Marriage implying that the Republican may face a stiff primary challenge, or at least pushback from socially conservative groups. [Albany Times Union]
– Mayors across Ohio are doing battle with newly-elected governor John Kasich over state funding for individual municipalities. The Republican’s budget for this year cuts state funding to local government by 34 percent, reduces their share of utility taxes by about half, and, in 2013, will eliminate an estate tax that channels 80% of its revenues to towns and cities. In the states industrial northeast corner, mayors from across party lines are calling the plan “a money grab” and accusing the governor and statehouse Republicans of trying to stem the flow of money into urban centers. [The Cleveland Plain-Dealer]
– A Tampa, Fla. based Tea Party organization, The Tampa 912 Project, will begin offering Saturday morning classes for children. The Liberty School, as it is called, seeks to instruct its students in the principles of freedom and liberty in the context of the American experience and this country’s founding, and is run by an offshoot of Glenn Beck’s 912 Project, one of the first Tea Party groups. [St. Petersburg Times]
– In Wisconsin, it appears that the state court system is just as out-of-control as its legislature, as detectives investigate a physical altercation between State Supreme Court Justices David Prosser and Ann Walsh Bradley. Prosser, who recently won a hotly-contested and widely-followed race for his seat on the bench, admitted to touching Bradley’s neck, while Bradley said she went “face to face to confront him,” but claimed not to have suffered any injury in the incident. According to court documents, a dispute occurred on June 13 that involved justices “shouting, slamming doors, being physically threatening and locking their doors at night because of safety concerns.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
– In a bizarre but definite softening of rhetoric, California Governor Jerry Brown compared Republican legislators’ aversion to tax hikes to a fear of sexually transmitted diseases, while working to dispel the notion that taxes should be treated as such. Previously, he had likend Republicans’ stance on tax hikes to the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion. [Sacramento Bee]
– Residents of Pinellas County, Florida, home to St. Petersburg, have become increasingly angry over redistricting in that state, taking to a recent hearing to protest the fact that state legislature has refused to show anything other than informal submissions at these meetings. Democrats are particularly incensed by this process, calling the meetings “useless” while representatives of left-wing groups have caused minor fracases by refusing to cut short their speaking time and yield the floor at such meetings. [St. Petersburg Times]
By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, on Tue Sep 6, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece asking whether Governor Rick Perry could call himself a Christian given his opposition to government actions to help the hungry, aged, and ill. Not surprisingly, many challengedmy view of Christianity. In letter after letter they pointed out that Christ spoke to individuals, not government. My observation that He was speaking to a conquered people, not free individuals who could use their power to make a more just state, was not convincing. My reference to the prophets Micah, Amos, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, each of whom called on governmental leaders to help the poor, was dismissed as being from the “Old Testament.”
I will surely return to the issue of Christianity again, but I devote this piece to Rick Perry’s character and the character he would nurture in American citizens. Teddy Roosevelt said, “Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.” So what is the character that Perry embodies? What is his view of the American citizen and the citizen’s responsibility to our country and to one’s fellows?
First, Perry himself.
His persona evokes the rugged individualist. His warning to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, not to come to Texas so that he can avoid being subjected to “real ugly” frontier justice evidences a character antithetical to one of the crowning achievements of the United States — a nation under law, not men. In a phrase, he dismisses the Bill of Rights — due process, trial by jury, the right to confront one’s accuser.
The real question is not what character he would make of the United States but whether he believes in America at all. He has threatened to secede. Central to his campaign is his pledge to shrink the federal government — making it impossible for our noble nation to lead the world, to serve as the “city on the Hill.”
Read the rest of… Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: Is Rick Perry as American as He Thinks He is?
Last night, the RP Family grew by one early yesterday evening, in the name of Charlie Wallace Smith, the first child of contributing RP Jeff Smith.
We here at The Recovering Politician heartily welcome Charlie to the world and hope that he inherits his father’s writing abilities and sense of humor, and his mother’s looks and height. At 8 pounds, 5 ounces, he’s well on his way to the latter.
Michael Bloomberg is not running for president, but he is about to engage a presidential size problem -the intractable poverty and alienation of young black and Latino men in the inner city.
The New York mayor has just announced a comprehensive campaign on several fronts, including the location of job recruitment centers within public housing complexes, revamping supervised release programs to confront recidivism, establishing parenting classes for new fathers, and most controversially, the city’s Education Department will be directed to factor in the performance and graduation rates of black and Latino boys in its annual assessment of schools. A school that lags in graduating black and Latino teenagers will now be at risk of being closed.
It is a smart strategy that is typical Bloomberg – funded two thirds by his own money and the money of his billionaire ally, George Soros, and one third by realigning public resources from less successful efforts; and unafraid to poke at some sacred cows in New York politics. As in most communities, the decision to close a school touches nerves, and Bloomberg’s accountability measures will shutter schools that can’t lift up their most vulnerable students.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Bloomberg’s Campaign for Minority Men
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